Heretofore, an adhesive label affixing device was provided with a detector for detecting the rear end of a label when the forward end thereof comes into contact with the article to be labelled in accordance with the size of the label temporarily stuck to a web of backing material.
And the device used to be for affixing the adhesive label in place on the surface of the article according to the detection signal transmitted by the above-mentioned detector.
With such a device, however, it was necessary to adjust the position of the detector each time the size of the adhesive label temporarily stuck to the backing material was changed. (See FIGS. 7(a) and 7(b). And the work of adjusting the position of the detector was time-consuming, being by no means easy. Moreover, with such a device, it was necessary to convey the articles to be labelled at the predetermined intervals according to the pitch at which the labels etc. were fed.
That is, failure of the agreement of the pitch of the labels etc. with the interval between the articles resulted in a difficulty of affixing the label precisely in place on the article. This was particularly the case and the consequence could be serious when, for instance, a label having printed thereon a "mark for reading" such as "bar code symbol" was to be affixed precisely in place on an article. This is because the "mark for reading" such as "bar code symbol" cannot be read or can only be read, with great difficulty, by the reading device unless the label bearing it is affixed at the predetermined position on the article.